Fstoppers.com Now Has A New Look

fsredesign Fstoppers.com Now Has A New Look Welcome to the new Fstoppers.com. We still are working out a few glitches here and there but almost everything is working perfectly now. We put a lot of thought into the new update and we decided to keep the layout the exact same and simply add some helpful features. The update was done by the incredibly talented team at Novum Studios.

The Layout
We didn’t want to change the way that you use Fstoppers.com so we left the layout of the exact same. You can still easily watch videos all from the home page and we didn’t move any buttons around. We did change the colors and the fonts but the website should still “feel” the same to all of you long time users.

Top Posts
We know that many of our readers visit Fstoppers multiple times a day and watch every video we post. Others may only come a couple times a month and they only have time to watch 1 or 2 videos a week. For these readers we created 4 links at the top of our home page to the most popular videos on our site. If you are looking for the best videos on our site, now you can easily find them.

Ratings
Now it is up to you to help rate the videos that we post. If you hate it, give it a 1 star, if you love it give it 5 (or anything in between). These ratings will help others decide whether or not it is worth their time to watch. Your ratings will also help us learn which posts you like and which you don’t. Please try your best to rate every video you watch so that our ratings are accurate.

Comments
The new comment system is probably our biggest upgrade. Now you can either create an account with Disqus or you can simply comment using your Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, or Open ID account. It is now possible to easily “like” other comments and respond to them. You can also easily add media to your comments like pictures and videos.

Categories
Over the next few years we are going to have a massive library of helpful BTSVs. We wanted there to be an easier way for you to find all of these videos and so Patrick and I went back through every single post and put them into very specific categories. You will notice that on our right sidebar you can easily click on the most popular categories, or click to “expand” the list and see them all.

Who Did It
If you need any web/design work done I honestly cannot recommended Novum Studios enough. We get people all the time who claim to know exactly what they are doing but when it comes time to produce quality work, they can’t. Case Sandberg and his team at Novum not only did an incredible job, they did it in about 7 days. For the next month they are giving 20% off to all FS readers so give them some business.

Tell Us What You Think
We put a lot of thought into updating Fstoppers so that it is easier to navigate for new readers and still very familiar for our long time readers. Please help us work the bugs out by telling us what you think in the comments below. If you see any glitches please let us know and we will try to fix them ASAP.

April 3, 2011

Lee Morris

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http://profiles.google.com/jmonegro Joel Monegro
I’ve gotten a bit more used to it now but I feel like it made the site a bit less professional, sort of? When I saw it the first time I thought it was an april fool’s joke in which you were mocking the Gawker blogs redesign from a few weeks ago. I guess it feels a bit jumpy and in the way of the videos.
It ressembles more a standard blog than as video blog. The previous design was more focused on the videos, whether intentionally or not.
http://www.rlmorris.com Lee Morris
Not a chance :) and I cannot believe that you say our last design (or lack of design as I say) was elegant
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
It’s funny you say that because we wanted a clean and bright look that is very typical of the most popular blogs in the world (google, facebook, engadget, apple, etc).
The problem with the old blog, whether you realized it or not, was there was a lot of design elements that made no sense or looked bad. Text categories all over the place, dates, email to a friend, link to this post, and lots and lots of dead gray space between posts, ads, and comments. If anything I thought it looked really unprofessional and sort of half-assed.
I think a big problem with the old design was it was primarily dark grey and now it’s light grey or white. Maybe we will post and old image of the blog in a few months; when I look at a screen capture on my computer now it looks so horrible.
http://profiles.google.com/shanep Shane Parker
Couple notes…
1- I like the new design better than the old. It’s clean, easy to read the articles, etc. These guys in the comments are off their rocker if they think the last design was better. It was HORRID. FYI, my day job is the head of the creative department for an umbrella corporation that owns over 15 different brands (thus, 15 different websites). All design comes through my department and I have the last say. The point being, I know what I’m talking about.
2- You need to duplicate the comment box to the bottom of the comments, otherwise the only way to leave a new comment (without replying to a previous comment) is to scroll clear back up to the top of the comments.
3- Get rid of the flash guys. This is 2011, Flash is no longer needed for such a simple banner rotation. Because this Flash implementation doesn’t work on a lot of mobile devices, it’s the wrong solution when all it does is rotate images. It would take 10 minutes to put together a jQuery rotater. This leads me to #4…
4- I don’t know who these guys are that designed this, but it’s clear that they just went into business after looking at their site. That’s just piss-poor decision making. Absolutely no info about their firm, it’s just an “intro page” and their “contact us” link is a friggin’ “mailto:” for god’s sake! I don’t think you guys are fooling anybody here, you’re either “Novum Studios” yourself or you’re helping out a friend, and that’s fine, but you might want to let your friend know they dropped the ball. They had a big opportunity to market themselves here. If they really are an established design firm… ouch.
Overall, good job. I like the new look, it really is more ‘fresh’ and tidy than the previous. There is nothing eye-catching or exciting about it, but sometimes that’s a good thing when your site is heavily driven blog content.
http://twitter.com/digideth digideth
Comments are UNREADABLE….
White text on light gray & white backgrounds in the comments makes them IMPOSSIBLE to read.
Please change this ASAP.
Other than that issue I love the redesign.
Keep up the Great work FS!
Anonymous
I also have white text in the comments area. Not sure why that is happening. Also, I checked the site over the weekend on my iphone 3Gs and the site will not shrink down in size. I know you guys will do whatever it takes to make it right. This site is a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate all the hard work that goes into it. Good sell on the Westin banners>
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=585306803 James McCormack
I am using Opera and cant see every second comment, if that makes sense! I have to highlight the text with my mouse to see it as its white text on a white background.
http://profiles.google.com/shanep Shane Parker
Guys, whatever you did in the last 24 hours, the comments are now unreadable, the text is all white and it’s been this day since yesterday. Might want to talk to that “design firm”, this should be a very quick fix and these comments are the life-blood of your site.
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
yeah we are working on it, problem is they are on completely different time zones. Should be fixed here soon. I don’t know why the mocking of their firm though. They are new and extremely talented. I think their idea was to have a few big sites in their portfolio before relaunching their own site and now they are dealing with a bit of backlash. I have no doubt their own site will look great once they have time to complete it.
http://twitter.com/digideth digideth
Oh ya its fixed!!
thank you for fixing it so quickly!
greatly appreciated!!
http://profiles.google.com/shanep Shane Parker
Comments are fixed, thanks!
I’m only havin’ fun with you Patrick. I mean, if you truly have no personal relation to these guys whatsoever, then I can’t believe the unbelievable risk you guys took by hiring them to redesign such a popular blog. I mean, what materials did you look at to base this decision on? Surely not their site, and as far as I can tell, you’re their first customer. Gotta think about it from my side of the fence. You’re pushing their business (read: advertising) to your readership and even offering an fstoppers discount, so I just like people to be very up front about their relationship to said advertisement. You have to admit, that does open them up to at least some level of scrutiny (as does advertising anything on your popular blog).
And again, I’m one of the very few in these comments who actually like the new design, so sit back and have a margarita, on me ;)
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
Yeah I can understand your concern. We basically just told them to show us what is possible with a mock up design we created together. Everything was hosted on their own server so we could see what direction it was going. What really sold me was talking to them on Skype. I was making some tough suggestions, and they were literally implementing them an hour later. These guys are amazing and I can’t speak highly of them enough.
We’ve put our neck out a few times from help with the initial wordpress install, to Dan at Swell Motion Graphics designing our FS video animations, to Novum Studios redesigning the site, and so far we’ve done well with our decisions. Lee and I know exactly what we want for the most part and we can instantly tell if someone can keep up or if they are all talk….and there are a lot of people who are all talk for sure! Novum Studios can deliver :)
http://profiles.google.com/shanep Shane Parker
That’s great, Patrick. I’ll stop harpin’ on you now :) They get a good score from me, I really do like the new look.
http://www.facebook.com/nateokane Nathan O’Kane
I don’t like being redirected to a comments page with the video on top. The old system of drop down comment box on the same page was much more efficient and far less annoying. Thanks!
http://twitter.com/digideth digideth
FYI your Favicon problem is in the code.
I can watch it change from the FS favicon to the WordPress favicon when the page loads.
You’re favicons are fighting each other… you have 2 listed in the code.
2 may enter only 1 may leave.
http://fstoppers.com/wp-content/themes/fstoppers/favicon.ico -> FStoppers
http://fstoppers.com/wp-content/themes/fstoppers/admin/images/favicon.ico -> WordPress
The one that needs to be removed is on line 90 right after this END Quantcast-Quantifier –>
http://profiles.google.com/janne.aavasalo janne aavasalo
Am I really the only one having problems with new videos not updating?
I’m still seeing old videos where there should be a new one. The new text is there, but with an older embedded video.
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
have not seen that one before, I will look into it. Try deleting all cookies and history and see if they load up correctly. It must be an isolated case because if this happened all the time I wouldn’t be hearing the end of it :)
http://profiles.google.com/janne.aavasalo janne aavasalo
Thanks for the answer Patrick,
I do empty my cookies & history from time to time and of course it works the first time, but after that it goes back the way it was.
I guess it’s my habit of keeping about 35 tabs always open and have Firefox remember and load them every time it starts.
I’m doing a complete re-install soon and switch to FF4, so I’ll have to see if the problem persists.
http://www.rlmorris.com Lee Morris
This may sound crazy but I once had stuff like that happening to me and it was because the date on my clock on Windows was wrong.
http://profiles.google.com/janne.aavasalo janne aavasalo
Hey Lee,
That’s checked, it’s on the right time :)
I think it’s more because I don’t “visit” your site every day, it’s always open in a tab on FF.
I’m sure there wouldn’t be a problem if I were to open a new tab and load Fstoppers every day, but that’s not how i roll :D
Let’s see if FF4 and a clean re-install will do the job.

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